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Dan and Ozzie Silna

Richard Sandomir of the New YorkTimes has a story today about the Silna brothers, Dan and Ozzie, who negotiated what’s been called “the greatest sports deal of all-time” back in 1976, when the NBA merged with the ABA.

I wrote about the Silnas amazing story back in May 2011. The short version: The Silna brothers were, at the time, the owners of the St. Louis Spirits of the ABA. During the merger, the NBA agreed to take on four of the ABA teams. That left three ABA teams out of the mix. When the Virginia Squires folded, the ABA and NBA had just two teams left to deal with: The Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits. The ABA offered the franchises $3 million each to fold. John Y. Brown, owner of the Colonels, took the deal. (Then the president and majority owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Brown would go on to become the governor of Kentucky.) The Silnas turned it down.

Instead, they negotiated their own deal. ABA officials, wanting to tidy up the merger, agreed to the following: the Silnas would be paid for any Spirits players drafted by NBA teams, an amount that came to roughly $2.2 million. On top of that, the Silnas would also get a 1/7th share of each of the four former ABA teams’ NBA “visual media” rights (which amounted to 57% of one full share).

Here’s the kicker: they would receive that share of the NBA’s television revenue…in perpetuity. That’s added up to around $255 million thus far. That’s a great deal for two owners of a team that hasn’t existed for 36 years.

As Sandomir reports, the Silnas are now looking for a bigger slice of the pie:

In Manhattan federal court on Thursday, lawyers for the Silna brothers and the league argued over whether the men are owed money beyond what they get from the N.B.A.’s national broadcast and cable television contracts. They want to tap into the money the league gets from international broadcasts, NBA TV, the league’s cable network, and other lucrative deals that could not have been imagined in the three network television universe of 1976.

Sandomir indicates that the ruling may, in the end, favor the Silnas. They are a headache that never ceases it’s pounding for the NBA. And they may turn the greatest deal of all time into something even sweeter.